As an opening/closing apparatus for vehicle, which opens and closes a slide door provided to a vehicle-body side portion of the vehicle such as a station wagon or minivan by the power of the drive source, there has been known a cable type apparatus in which a pair of cables located on an open side and a close side are coupled to the slide door from forward and backward directions of the vehicle; and those cables are driven by a drive unit that uses an electric motor or the like as a drive source, whereby the slide door is operated for opening and closing while being towed by the cables.
Meanwhile, a door-lock mechanism is provided in the vehicle to retain the closed slide door at a fully-closed position. In order to lock and unlock the vehicle body and the slide door, the door-lock mechanism is provided with: a striker fixed to one of the vehicle body and the slide door; and a latch provided to the other thereof, wherein the latch is engaged with the striker so as to be turned to a full latch position if the slide door is closed up to the fully-closed position. Further, a ratchet is provided in the door-lock mechanism, and if the latch is rotated up to the full latch position, the ratchet is engaged with the latch, whereby rotation of the latch in an unlatch direction is regulated, and the slide door is retained at the fully-closed position.
Now, when the slide door is fully closed, a door seal member for preventing rainwater from entering into a vehicle compartment in a fully-closed state of the slide door is provided to one of positions where the slide door and the vehicle body are opposed to each other, so that the door seal member is elastically and abutably disposed in the fully-closed state. For this reason, when the slide door is closed up to a half door position and then is being retracted up to the fully-closed position, a force for deforming (or compressing) the seal member is required, so that there is the case where it is difficult to retract the slide door from the half door position to the fully-closed position only by a force generated from the drive unit.
Accordingly, an opening/closing apparatus shown in, for example, Patent Document 1 (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 6-323057) discloses that a closer mechanism for performing a pulling operation is separately provided in addition to a drive unit for automatically opening and closing a slide door, whereby when the slide door is closed up to a half door position, the closer mechanism causes a latch engaged with a striker to be driven from an unlatch position to a full latch position so as to pull the slide door up to the fully-closed position.
Further, when the closed slide door is automatically opened, it is necessary to release retention of the slide door by the door-lock mechanism, that is, engagement of the ratchet with the latch. For this reason, in the opening/closing apparatus shown in, for example, Patent Document 1, a releaser mechanism for unlocking the door-lock mechanism is separately provided in addition to the drive unit, and when the slide door is automatically opened from the fully-closed position, the releaser mechanism causes a releasing operation to be performed by driving the ratchet from an engaged position to a disengaged position, whereby the retention of the slide door by the door-lock mechanism is automatically released.
Meanwhile, there is also known a vehicle provided with a door-lock mechanism (open-state retention mechanism) for retaining an opened slide door at a predetermined open position. In such a vehicle, for example, when the slide door is opened up to a fully-opened position, an engaged member (hook) is engaged with an engaging member so that the slide door is retained at the fully-opened position.